Not Without A Home
by KatieTheBaka
Summary: After Gallifrey burned, the Doctor spent 23 years alone. Well, the TARDIS is having none of that, is she? "For the Doctor, life was now divided into two eras: Before and After Gallifrey."


For the Doctor, life was now divided into two eras: BG and AG. Before and After Gallifrey.

It was currently 23 AG, if you went by the standard 365-days-a-year human model. Twenty-three years since his planet had burned and he had used the Moment; twenty-three years since he had felt the reassuring presence of thousands of minds lingering in the back of his own; twenty-three years since he had last seen another living soul. He ate only when he had to, he slept only when he was exhausted enough to keep the nightmares away, and he hadn't left the TARDIS.

At all.

Twenty-three years was only a blink of an eye in the scheme of things, but for the Doctor it was his own personal hell. A self-imposed punishment of sorts. He wanted to remember every scream, every cry, every blaze of fire, and he wanted to let it eat him up inside, let it consume him—

Suddenly, the TARDIS doors opened and a rush of cold air shocked him from his thoughts. "Now what did you do that…" he trailed off. "Oh."

He looked out into the stars, his gaze lingering on the giant black space where Gallifrey once was. An invisible wind—the opposing air pressures leveling out—blew his leather jacket a bit and tickled his ears.

"Why did you take me here?" He asked weakly, his voice holding a strange mixture of impossible anger and heartbreaking sadness. He tried to close the doors, but they wouldn't budge. "Come on," he begged, eyes glistening. "Please!"

They still remained open, forcing him to look at what he had done.

The longer he stared at the blank space, the less empty it seemed to be. Instead of blackness, he saw swirls of blues and rich purples, flecks of silver and gold. He _felt _the power of time coursing through his veins and the pressure of it all pressing down on his mind and weighing down his soul and he wanted to look away but everything was swirling and intense and beautiful and frightening and he felt like an eight-year-old looking into the Untempered Schism for the first time and he wanted to run and run and run and never stop running until he was far enough away that he forgot.

So the Doctor did what he did best.

He ran.

He ran to the console, inputting the first coordinates he could think of. He grumbled a bit as he piloted, mostly to the TARDIS: "I knew I should have gotten a Type 60; they would never be this stubborn—"

The doors behind him slammed with a loud bang and he received a shock for his trouble. "Ow! Yes, well, sorry."

He looked up at the doors once the flight had stopped and hesitated. What if he hadn't moved? What if he was still there and he was forced to feel that pressure for the rest of his lives? His twin hearts sped up and his breath quickened. Figuring it was like a band-aid, he flung the doors open and prepared for the worst.

The Doctor was quite surprised, then, to be staring face-to-planet with the blue and green paint splotch that was Sol 3.

"Earth? Really? _That's _what I come up with? With all those little apes clinging to its surface, carrying on as if they're safe?"

He blinked, hit with a sudden realization: of course the idiots thought they were safe. They always had been, because of him.

He looked down at the planet more fondly now. It did have a sort of poetry to it: coming full circle to the one place besides Gallifrey where he felt like he belonged.

"I guess I could pop in, just for a visit. Check out those readings we've been getting off London, hmm, old girl? For old time's sake?"

The TARDIS hummed happily, glad to have gotten her point across, even landing with a little less turbulence than usual. The Doctor checked the scanner for the source of the strange signals: some department store, now closing for the night, called Henricks. The Doctor grabbed his screwdriver and TARDIS keys, leaving the blue box and locking it. He stopped his tuneless whistling for a moment to breathe deeply, savoring the feel of the fresh London air.

Even if Gallifrey had burned, he decided, it didn't mean the Doctor was completely without a home.


End file.
